SMEs Current Affairs

India and Philippines have signed four agreements in areas of defence, agriculture, small and medium enterprises and tie-up between think-tanks. The defence agreement is to have private and public enterprises to cooperate in the defence sector, including on the off-shore patrolling vessels.

These agreements were signed after bilateral meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila on sidelines of the ASEAN and related summits that are underway in Philippines capital. It was first bilateral visit by Indian PM to Philippines in 36 years after visit of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981, though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited the southeast Asian country in 2007 for ASEAN summit.

Highlights Visit

PM Modi contributed two Indian rice seed varieties to gene bank of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Philippines which is working towards mitigating global poverty and hunger by improving cultivation of key grain.

He also visited IRRI in Los Banos, an urban locality around 65 km from Manila and interacted with several Indian scientists working there. He also inaugurated ‘rice field laboratory’ named after him as Narendra Modi Resilient Rice Field Laboratory.